Not only did the “owner of the car forgot to set the parking brake,” he/she also forgot to put the car in park or at least leave it in gear.

Whoa! Watertown Police say an unoccupied car rolled down a hill around 11 a.m. and jumped the curb landing on Main St by Echo Lake Rd. No injuries. There were no cars passing by either. The owner of the car forgot to set the parking brake & was issued an infraction. pic.twitter.com/i3McjGxd7I

— Carmen Chau (@CChauFOX61) December 12, 2021

I woke up this morning to the Golden Globe and Critics Choice Award nominations, and quickly succumbed to the same mixture of lethargy and depression that everyone else is feeling.

Not so much about the Globes — will anyone care which films they’ll celebrate? will their picks influence anyone or anything in any way? — but the CCAs.

I was primarily upset when a friend predicted this morning that the box-office collapse of West Side Story had dented its award cred (“Nobody likes to vote for a loser”) and that the odds seem to favor a Best Picture win for Kenneth Branagh‘s Belfast. With the CCAs, I mean.

When I heard this I went “wait…what?”

West Side Story is still the same emotionally affecting, inventively shot and cut, extremely well-made film it was before last weekend’s box-office calamity. It really is the superior contender out there, certainly by my sights.

The Globes won’t have their traditional NBC telecast because of the angry industry boycott over a previous lack of black members, but their show, set for 1.22.22, will be streamed.

GG Best Motion Picture, Drama: Belfast, CODA, Dune, King Richard, The Power of the Dog. HE personal pick among these five: King Richard. Likely winner: I can’t say it…don’t ask.

GG Best Motion Picture, Musical or Comedy: Cyrano, Don’t Look Up, Licorice Pizza, Tick, Tick … Boom!, West Side Story. HE personal pick among these five: West Side Story. Likely winner: Don’t ask.

I am swallowed in lethargy…drowning in the stuff. I used to feel such excitement for this and that awards contender. I used to be a big rooting fan of awards season favorites. I would cheer and whoo-whoo! when my “team” won. I was in heaven when Green Book won Best Picture and all the would-be wokester assassins seethed and muttered “curses!” Their rage was my joy.

Now there’s…I was going to say “nothing” but what I mean is that there’s not very much. I’m not feeling anything right now. The West Side Story collapse knocked the wind out of me.

CCA Best Picture nominees: Belfast, CODA, Don’t Look Up, Dune, King Richard, Licorice Pizza, Nightmare Alley, The Power of the Dog, tick, tick…Boom!, West Side Story. HE personal pick: West Side Story. Likely winner: I can’t say it. (The show will air on Sunday, Janary 9th.)

I’ll get into the actor nominations and likely winners later. I’m too depressed to sift through it all now.

Awards Daily‘s Sasha Stone:
“It’s so many things at once. It’s COVID, primarily. It’s the comfort and isolation and security people have found in their homes this past year, with no desire to leave. It’s inflation — that is going to impact how people spend their money on stuff like movies since it impacts their gas prices and their grocery bill. Finding that extra cash to go out and sit in a movie theater probably isn’t a major priority at the moment. Richard Rushfield has been tracking the demise for a while now, with stories like “Will Movies Survive?” And “The Disappearance of Hollywood as We Know It” and “The Twin Plagues of Moviedom’s Assisted Suicide.”

HE Honestly? I don’t care how on-the-money Rushfield is with his doom-and-gloom assessments about how theatrical is basically finished, or certainly for people like me. I’m getting really fucking sick of hearing how horrible everything is, and how doomed we all are, and how the animals are doing their share and then some to bring this about.

Back to Sasha: “We can be aware of what’s happening. We can watch what’s happening. But probably only something like the news of West Side Story’s dismal box-office could provide that moment of ‘oh wow, everything really has changed.’

“It breaks my heart. There is so much content being produced every day that is occupying the attention spans of people that might have previously gone to the movies. At least we know teenagers are still going to go to the movies — for something to do on a Saturday night, for a place to go where their helicopter parents won’t follow, a place to go to make out. Parents will also still take their kids to the movies. The movies that will continue to thrive will be animation, fantasy, horror and genre movies.” HE comment: “That’s so sickening! We are truly witnessing the downfall of the “good movies are usually supported by smart audiences” holiday aesthetic. We are spiralling into decline. The end of a way of life.

Sasha: “I was hoping West Side Story would be our deus ex machina. Looks like we’re going to need a bigger boat.”

I travelled for over 11 or 12 hours yesterday, leaving Jett’s home at 1:45 pm New Jersey time and not arriving back home in WeHo until after 10 pm Los Angeles time (1 am by Jett’s clock). I had a great seat with ample leg room, right next to the main exit door. But I also paid a certain price for being more visible to the stewardesses.

For the first time since the pandemic hit 21 months ago and after five or six LA-NY round-trip flights, I was constantly pestered about my mask behavior. Pestered, in fact, four or five times by a fickle, pain-in-the-ass stewardess for not keeping my mask above my nostrils.

We all know the rules, but I like to go mask–casual after sitting down in a plane, a restaurant, a bar or some other commercial enclosed space. We take our masks off once we’re seated in a restaurant, but in planes we keep them on. I for one like to let my mask droop a bit below the tip of the nose in order to avoid all that warm steam fogging up my glasses. 1/3 of an inch below my nostrils…big deal.

For this I was hassled relentlessly by a certain stewardess. This has never, ever happened to me before. Nearly two years of this shit and I’ve never had a single dispute with any steward or waiter or security guard or anyone else about mask-wearing. I might have dropped the mask three or four times while sipping a drink and munching pretzels and whatnot. I didn’t argue or get snippy or argumentative, but it was awful. I am not a rule-breaker in this regard. I have always followed correct Covid protocols. Life is too short not to.

As a general rule of the future I think I’ll be avoiding United if at all possible. A very unpleasant flight in this regard.

Two and a half years ago I suggested that 2007 was and is one of the great film years, or roughly at par with 1999, 1971 and 1962 and 1939.

I listed 25 2007 films of serious merit — American Gangster, Before The Devil Knows You’re Dead, No Country for Old Men, Once, Superbad, Michael Clayton, There Will Be Blood, Things We Lost in the Fire, Zodiac, The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, Atonement, 4 Months, 3 Weeks, 2 Days, I’m Not There, Sicko, Eastern Promises, The Bourne Ultimatum, Control, The Orphanage, 28 Weeks Later, In The Valley of Elah, Ratatouille, Charlie Wilson’s War, The Darjeeling Limited, Knocked Up and Sweeney Todd. Just as strong as ’99, and perhaps even a touch better.

The idea in re-posting this is to note that 15 years have elapsed since ’07, and to ask if anyone feels that any of these annums have measured up to ’07 or any of the previous banner years.

I happen to believe that everything started to go badly the following year — 2008 — with the debut of Iron Man and the subsequent increasing power of the superhero genre (DC Extended Universe, Marvel Cinematic Universe), and that “my” kind of movies haven’t been the same since. Strong, distinctive films have broken through every year, of course, but the pickings have been getting slimmer and slimmer since ’08, and especially since the Robespierre thought plague began to poison the water in ’17.

But don’t let me stop anyone. If you’re persuaded that ’09 or ’11 or ’16 were up to snuff, please make your case.

Is Hideo Nishijima‘s Drive My Car now currently positioned as the likely favorite to win the Best Int’l Feature Oscar? Probably. Okay, maybe not. Snooty critics carry only so much cred. I’m an Asghar Farhadi man myself.

Herewith a tough but fair assessment from Variety’s Owen Gleiberman about why West Side Story (and it breaks my heart to say this) appears to be a flopperoo, at least as far as viewing appetites outside your X-factor Millennial, older GenX and boomer demos are concerned.

Not technique- or chops-wise but vision-wise in terms of reading the cultural zeitgeist, Gleiberman is saying that Spielberg’s instincts are perhaps no longer in synch with things, at least not in a razor–sharp way and certainly not like they were between Duel and Schindler’s List/Jurassic Park. He’s gotten older. It happens.

Arrogant assumptions + klutzy presumptions that it wouldn’t all come out in the wash don’t translate into “disgrace” for ex-CNN anchor Chris Cuomo. He’s not a panting sexual animal, and isn’t in the same league with brother & ex-governor Andrew at all. It was rash and sloppy for the SNL team to slander him with the “d” word.

By the way, with Chris Wallace resigning from Fox is it feasible for the Trump-loathing Chris to fill his slot? Probably not, I would imagine.

Remember Lin Manuel Miranda‘s In The Heights, the pizazzy, well-reviewed, media-adored, ethnically-celebrated New York City musical that became one of the biggest crash-and-burn calamities of recent times?

Initial first-weekend projections had it earning as much as $25 million; that figure dropped to the low teens after the first day of release yielded a lousy $5 million. The final opening weekend tally was $11.5 million. Shrieks of shock and disbelief echoed ’round the twitterverse…”what the eff happened?” In The Heights needed $200 million worldwide to break even, but ended up with $43.9 million…wipe-out.

It was generally surmised that Steven Spielberg‘s West Side Story would do better — ecstatic reviews, greater brand recognition, great songs, adored by older demos, respected by upmarket X-factor Millennials. Especially given that it opened without a competing day-and-date streaming option (which In The Heights had). Plus Jett and Cait wanted to see it this weekend at their local West Orange plex and every after-dinner weekend show was sold out — they had to settle for Monday evening.

As recently as yesterday morning it was projected by CNN Business’s Frank Pallotta to earn “roughly” $15 million. But WSS only managed a paltry $4.1 million on Friday (including Thursday previews) and will probably end up with a fizzly $10.5 million by tonight — over a million less than In The Heights.

This basically translates into a big nope.

Deadline‘s Anthony D’Allessandro: “[While] the end game for West Side Story is a marathon [and] not a sprint, the mainstream box-office media [can now] feasibly write that a Spielberg film with a $100 million-plus production cost” — rumored to be as high as $130 million, and that’s without prints and ads — “is a bomb.”

Thanks, Millennials who fucking ignored this exceptionally well made and emotionally affecting film and yet intend to storm theatres next weekend for Spider-Man: No Way Home…thanks, Zoomers…and thanks older people (especially older women) who were too busy or too Covid-concerned to show up. You joined your various lethargies and worked together to help kill the theatrical aura (but hopefully not the long-term potential) of one of the finest and most alive-on the-planet-earth films of the year.

Yes, West Side Story is looking at a long game, but how do you work your way out of under-performing compared to In The Heights? Especially considering that West Side Story cost twice as much as Miranda’s film, and probably shouldered heftier p&a costs.

Jett (33 year old Millennial): “There was nothing about West Side Story that was new or immediate or star-driven or which felt like any kind of direct feed or boost from today’s culture. It’s not a streaming-age movie, and the here-and-now element is minimal. It’s basically a nostalgia show for older audiences, and not enough older viewers came out for it.”

67% of In The Heights audience was over 25; 63% female and 40% Latino. 52% of West Side Story ticket buyers were over 35 and 57% female.

No way around it — this was a shit-level opening for West Side Story. And if it finds no traction next weekend, what left will there be to say?

Nick “Action Man” Clement: “I find it interesting that anyone would have thought that this movie would have actually been a box-office hit. Nobody cares. This would have been the case pre-COVID, but mid-COVID? The movie was doomed from the start.

“I haven’t seen it yet — doubtful I’ll have the chance to see it on the big screen — but this spells the end of the studio-fortified adult drama-slash-big musical. If an ecstatically reviewed Beardo film can’t put butts in seats, what can?

The other night I happened to re-watch this famous scene from Albert Brooks‘ Lost in America. To me it represents the summit of what HE has been hailing for years — the art of no-laugh funny. Anxious vibe, character-driven, but never more than darkly, oddly amusing.

The only conventional laugh line comes when casino manager Gary Marshall takes offense when Brooks alludes to “all the schmucks who come to Las Vegas to see Wayne Newton,” etc.

Brooks and Marshall are treating each other correctly and amiably as far as it goes, but there’s a fascinating tension between the latter, a smart, perceptive, no-nonsense type, and Brooks’ David Howard, a 30something advertising guy who’s recently persuaded his wife (Julie Hagerty) to join him in a drop-out adventure in which they’d live out of their mobile home and become nomads. Except Hagerty has blown their nest egg at roulette, and Brooks is thisclose to melting down, etc.

Why have I posted this? Because Marshall pronounces “Santa Claus” as “Santy Claus”, and I’m wondering where that pronunciation comes from. Maybe nowhere. Perhaps Marshall, a once-powerful signature helmer of mainstream studio relationship comedies, was the first, last and only guy who said “Santy Claus.” He was born in the mid 1930s to an Italian dad and a German, English and Scottish mother. It’s presumably an immigrant-class ethnic thing — no relatively well-off, college-educated, middle-class person has ever said “Santy” Claus. I’m just asking.